Collectors & Gamblers

Bored in my bedsit on a weekend afternoon,
I scan the streets below and see
A range of supermarkets, shops and parking lots;
Opposite, a museum and, further down, a betting shop,
With windowed winners photofinishing at the post.
A suburban spy, I classify the type
And approximate, adjust, these mirrors to myself.

Into the doors, revolving, of the institution scuttle
The collectors, stiff and vague with thinning hair,
Formaldhyde lives, fading in their clothes
All the dulls of grey and gabardine.
An eccentric glitter of domes and pebbled specs:
All too easy to imagine them by night
Reposing in some silent house of wax or,
Dentures removed, sinking with a happy sigh
Into some vacant tube or jar.

Professional practitioners of retention,
Sunk in their sallow seams of dusty flesh,
We glimpse the cabinets and bureaux where they work:
Shabby civil faces of municipalities, exhausted evening edifices,
Keeping and spending time, sorting their cards already filed.

I’ve seen such faces in aquaria and zoos,
Eyes forever on the inside looking out,
Hating and angered by what they’re not
And see and miss and cannot, will not, be.

The punters seem a more attractive bunch:
Big ruddy brawlers, loud checked and capped.
Roaring for rounds, shovelling down sausages and snacks,
Tipping jokes and grins, familiar, carny, knowing.
Excitement’s their game, skating on the edge of things,
Pulling life up to a climax with each bet,
Whether the curtain parts to give a lovepat or a kick.

Losing, they seem happy enough,
But closer looks reveal a spreading desperation.
The nods and winks and grins unshoal.
‘Give us a sign.’
Maybe they want to lose, pleased like children
To be assigned life’s long ‘Told you so.’

Curious these two apart should be so like
But maybe not; perhaps it’s like school:
The falsely good, the skivers and the wild.
All get their different doses: lines and detention
Punishment in drops, on the instalment plan,
Or clobbered hard and then, for now, let go.

Or not like that: from life’s shadows we foolishly infer
A face, something overwatching, hard and knowing:
Master, mother, god or boss.
Caught between smiles and tears, we paint a mask
On what seems to step so closely to the measure of our lives,
We listen, straining to catch some message,
Some words of blame and recognition.
In vain: hidden in the noise only
The death rattle of the dice, the hissing of the wheel.